This year we tried to start our own seeds to put in our garden. We had some seeds harvested from last year. I also purchased some seeds at Home Depot. We started watermelon, cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes. We tried making our own biodegradable planters. We started by ripping about 4 inch strips of newspaper. We then rolled it around a water bottle leaving about 1 1/2 inches of paper on the bottom and folded that up to close up the bottom. We then added two Dixie cups of potting soil and planted a few seeds in each. In retrospect, we should have compacted the soil a bit better and added more. I then placed them on a tray in our display case with a fluorescent bulb just above the pots and kept them watered.
I am not sure why, but only about half of our plants germinated. The students were kind of disappointed but I explained that not everything works out the way we want.
